Gun Control Advocates Make Up Facts

By John R. Lott Jr. as posted on Big Government.com

People walking the streets armed with guns must be dangerous, right? The Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center keep claiming that even those individuals who have legally obtained permits to carry concealed handguns are extremely dangerous. With millions of Americans already having been issued such permits from the various states, this is an important issue.

The gun control organizations have frequently made these claims in the press. The Associated Press articles by Erik Schelzig and by Jim Abrams have given extensive, uncritical coverage. Members of the gun control organizations have made these claims unchallenged on such places as Fox News and on the Huffington Post. But the gun control advocates inaccurately describe many shooting cases, choosing to ignore that the majority of incidents involve people properly defending themselves.

Over the past three years, the number of active permit holders in the United States has gone from about 5 million to more than 6.2 million today. The numbers issued by the state regulatory agencies show time after time that these permit holders abide by the law.

Take Florida, which currently has the most concealed handgun permit holders in the country and is one of the two most populous states with right-to-carry laws. Between Oct. 1, 1987, and May 31 this year, permits had been issued to 1.8 million people. On average, the permits had been held for quite a long time, well over 10 years. For all those individuals across the more than 22 years of legal carry, there were only 167 cases where the permit was revoked for a firearms related violation, or about 0.01 percent of permit holders. While the state doesn’t provide a precise breakdown of the reason for those revocations, the vast majority were apparently for people who accidentally carried their concealed handgun into a gun-free zone, such as an airport or school.

Throughout the past 30 months, beginning January 2008, only three additional permit holders have had their permit revoked for a firearms-related violation. With more than 739,000 active permit holders, that is an annual revocation rate of 0.00017 percent.

In sharp contrast, the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center portray Florida as Ground Zero for problems with concealed handgun permit holders. They boldly assert that 17 Florida permit holders have “killed” people with their guns over the past three years and that this one state by itself accounts for 17 of the 96 “killer” permit holders nationwide. The other 79 cases are scattered across 26 other states, with no other state accounting for more than 10 cases. Florida is also said to account for 2 of the 7 cases where permit holders are said to have killed law enforcement officers.

So what is the evidence? The gun control groups don’t actually point to actual court cases. They look at news stories and selectively report what is reported in those stories. For Florida, there are eleven “pending cases.” The gun control groups assume that anyone involved in a shooting will be convicted. Indeed, in 7 of the 11 cases no one was even charged with a crime. Three cases involved suicides, and three had convictions for some type of offense. (See this link for a detailed presentation of sources.)

But there is something that the gun control advocates conveniently omit: When a permit holder uses a gun defensively and kills an attacker in a public place, the police often arrest them. Typically, he will later be released, but the police must first investigate what happened. The police can’t just take the shooter’s word for it that they used the gun defensively.

Take the four pending cases where charges were filed, two of which involved the “killing” of law enforcement.

– Humberto Delgado, Jr. was charged with the death of a police officer. Delgado obviously engaged in a horrible crime, but there is one major problem with the stories as presented by the gun control groups. He also was charged with carrying a concealed firearm. If he had a concealed handgun permit, he obviously couldn’t have been charged with this crime. Delgado was just your typical criminal, who didn’t have a permit, who killed a police officer.

– James Wonder was charged with the death of an off-duty Customs and Border Protection Agent Donald Pettit. Pettit is said to have engaged in road rage against Wonder and then followed Wonder’s car into a Post Office parking lot solely to continue harassing Wonder. Pettit had over shot the parking lot and had to circle back to go into it. He had no intention to do business with either the Post Office or any other nearby business. Pettit was clearly the aggressor in the situation. The Sun-Sentinel newspaper wrote on August 29, 2008: “local lawyers said [Wonder] may be able to make a strong claim under Florida law that he was within his rights to shoot Pettit.” One measure of the severity of the case is that Wonder was released on a very minimal bond of $10,000. Neither the Brady Campaign nor the Violence Policy Center noted these points in their discussion of the case.

– Gabriel Mobley shot two people outside a bar, and the gun control groups’ discussions fail to mention the defensive nature of Mobley’s actions. A friend of Mobley’s had an argument with two other men in a bar. Mr. Mobley separated the men, but the two waited outside and Mobley’s lawyer, Richard Della Ferra, told me that they pounced on Mobley and his friend as soon as they left the bar. Witnesses saw one of the two attackers throw a punch that shattered the friend’s eye socket. Mobley says that he shot when he thought one of the two men was reaching for a weapon, and police found the DNA of one of the men on a steak knife at the scene.

– On January 7, 2008, Adam Hill was accused of accidentally firing his gun, the bullet fatally striking a friend while the friend had visited Hill to use his washing machine. Since the case has yet to go to trial, the law office that is representing Hill was unwilling to discuss the case, but they did say that the news articles did not accurately represent what had happened in the case. The law office representing Hill in his legal case emphasized to me in a telephone discussion that news articles on these cases can be quite misleading because defense lawyers warn their clients not to talk to others about their case, including the press.

Two of the three convictions in Florida are quite different than what gun control groups represent. One involved a boyfriend who accidentally shot his girlfriend when he was showing her how to use a gun in her home. There was no evidence of arguing or any disagreement. In another case, the issue was whether the permit holder had done enough to avoid the confrontation. A convicted felon confronted the permit holder. According to newspaper accounts, even the prosecutor acknowledged: “Kallenbach was in some way defending himself during an escalating altercation between the men caught on the security video” and that “People can look at that tape and interpret it two or three different ways.”

While this discussion focuses on Florida, the just released third edition of More Guns, Less Crime provides a detailed analysis for all states from 1990 to July 1, 2008. In state after state, permit holders are extremely law-abiding. In Arizona, there were 99,370 active permits as of December 1, 2007. During 2007, 33 permits were revoked for any reason — a 0.03 percent rate. In Texas, there were 288,909 active permit holders. Of these, 160 were convicted of either a misdemeanor or a felony, a rate of 0.05 percent. That is about one-seventh the conviction rate in the general adult population, and the convictions among permit holders are for much less serious offenses.

I went to some other cases from the gun control groups after July 1, 2008. In two of the other five killings involving law-enforcement, it also appears as if the person who fired a gun didn’t have a concealed handgun permit. In one case, in Pennsylvania, Christina Korbe fired a shot killing a police officer when police raided her home. The police were serving an arrest warrant on her husband, and she didn’t know it was the police who were breaking into her home, and she was concerned about the safety of her two children, ages 4 and 10.

The Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center evaluate the benefits of concealed handgun laws based solely on the claimed costs — they don’t compare the cases where defensive uses occurred to the bad things that happen, but only count what they claim are the bad cases. They ignore lots of amazing defensive gun use cases. But even more bizarrely, they count legitimate self-defense cases as bad events even when no charges are filed or the permit holder is later exonerated.

Mayor defends gun law with bayonet?

NOTE: This article was written before our historic victory in the McDonald V. Chicago case.

Shotgun News

By Vin Suprynowicz

Mayor defends gun law with bayonet? As an 80-year-old Korean War veteran, his wife and great-grandson slept in their home in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago just before dawn on May 26, a would-be burglar broke in a basement window, crawled over some discarded paint buckets, and made his way up winding stairs to an enclosed porch.

The intruder tried the knob of the locked door that led to the first-floor apartment. He then turned to the oversized glass window of the 80-year-old's bedroom, pulled out his gun and fired, police and family say.

But just as the man got off a second round, the homeowner, who had a handgun of his own, fired a single shot, killing the intruder.

"He missed, (but) my daddy didn't," said the 80-year-old's son, Butch Gant, who lives upstairs.

"My father had no choice. It was him or the other guy."

The shooting came as the U.S. Supreme Court was expected to rule by the end of June on Chicago's decades-old ban on possessing handguns. During oral arguments in March, the court's majority appeared to lean toward striking down the city ordinance. That means they're expected to rule—again—that residents have a constitutional right to keep a handgun at home.

(How many times do they have to issue the same ruling before it's assumed to apply in every American city? Don't ask me.)

Chicago police have long aggressively tried to disarm the law-abiding public, saying firearms are the principal weapons used in murders and gang violence.

But the Chicago Tribune reported many in that city echoed the feelings of the victim's family that if he hadn't been armed, the encounter could have ended in their deaths.

"He saved our lives," the man's wife, 83, who had been asleep with her husband when the window shattered, told the Tribune.

Police let the Korean War veteran, who walks with the aid of a cane, go without filing immediate charges because it appeared he acted in self-defense, according to police sources.

But they took away his handgun, which he had bought after being robbed just six months earlier, vowing not to be a victim again, his family said.

The dead intruder was later identified by his family as Anthony "Big Ant" Nelson, 29, on parole since December following a three-year prison sentence for a drug conviction. Nelson had a 13-page rap sheet that includes a number of drug and weapons convictions dating to 1998, according to police and court records. He lived less than a mile from where he died.

If gun laws could do any good at all, surely they'd block ex-cons with 13-page rap sheets from going armed.

"They did the right thing," said neighbor Audrey Williams, 75, of the shooting. "If anyone tried to come in on me, I'd do the same thing." Ms. Williams described the assaulted family—whose names were withheld by police as crime victims—as "sweet people who don't bother anyone."

"How are we going to protect our homes without guns?" asked Gant, the son. "That gun law should be abolished."

Fortunately, thanks to the Illinois legislature's override of indicted Gov. Rod Blagojevich's veto of state Senate Bill 2165 in November, 2004, the Army veteran should not face prosecution, report Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman of the Bellevue, Wash.-based Second Amendment Foundation.

That was the "Hale DeMar" act, which protects homeowners who shoot in self-defense even if there's a local ordinance against handgun possession.

DeMar shot a burglar in his Wilmette home and was initially charged for violating that community's handgun ban, but public outrage forced the Cook County prosecutor to drop the charge.

"The question remains in this case whether the old gentleman will get his gun back from the police when the investigation is completed," Gottlieb and Workman note.

Shortly before this latest incident of righteous self-defense, at a May press conference, Mick Dumke, a reporter from the alternative weekly Chicago Reader, asked Chicago Mayor Richard Daley what should have been an obvious question, reports our friend John Lott at the National Review Online.

"Since guns are readily available in Chicago even with a ban in place, do you really think it's been effective?" the reporter asked.

Daley's response "wasn't very helpful," Lott, an economist, reports. "Picking up a very old rifle with a bayonet that had been turned in during one of Chicago's numerous gun buybacks, Daley blustered: 'Oh, it's been very effective. If I put this up your butt, you'll find out how effective it is. ... This gun saved many lives—it could save your life.'"

Reporters greeted Daley's outburst with a moment of stunned silence. But it wasn't Daley's answer that was important, Lott points out. "The novelty is that a reporter actually questioned Daley on whether the gun ban had failed."

Even mainstream television news is questioning the gun ban. A broadcast on Chicago's CBS-TV in May noted:

"They are law-abiding citizens in Chicago, but they are so worried about their own safety, they say they might have to break the law. The last straw was the death of Chicago Police officer Thomas Wortham IV last week. That has some African-American families in Chicago considering doing something they never would have done before: carry a pistol. CBS 2's Jim Williams reports he grew up among those families and he's never (seen) anything like it. Many Chicagoans have been upset for some time about violence here, but Wortham's murder has touched a raw nerve in the black community. Now some want to do more than simply call 911 or march for peace in the streets. They want their own gun...."

Gun ban supporters often argue their city-by-city efforts have failed to reduce crime because of the ease of getting guns in nearby jurisdictions,. Lott pointed out in a separate piece for FoxNews.com on May 25.

"Yet, even in island nations such as Ireland, the U.K., and Jamaica-all of which have imposed bans-their easily defendable borders and lack of obvious neighbors haven't stopped drug gangs from getting either drugs or the guns that they use to protect their valuable product.

"Do gun bans really stop criminals from getting guns? Americans need not look no further than the massive gun battle with armed gangs fighting police and soldiers that took place in Kingston, Jamaica today,î Lott noted. "At least 30 people were killed in the fighting. It is a huge number for a small island nation of fewer than 3 million people, but unfortunately murder is so common in Jamaica that these murders won't even be noticed in the annual crime numbers."

Jamaica wasn't always such an extremely violent country. Jamaica experienced large increases in murder rates after enacting a handgun ban in 1974. In fact, Jamaica's murder rate hasn't sunk below 10 murders per 100,000 people since the gun ban went into effect.

Taxi driver Derrick Bird drove his vehicle on a shooting spree across a tranquil stretch of northwest England on June 2, methodically killing 12 people and wounding 25 others by shooting each of them in the face with a shotgun, before turning the gun on himself, officials said.

The rampage in the county of Cumbria was Britain's deadliest mass shooting since 1996.

None of the victims had any chance to defend themselves, because England has banned the possession of handguns for self-defense. (Even rural farmers need to state a "reason" to be allowed to keep a shotgun.)

Maybe the cantankerous cabbie's victims were supposed to dash home to grab a bow and arrow (or have those been banned, too?)

The body of the suspected gunman, 52-year-old Derrick "Birdie" Bird, was found in a wooded area near Boot, in England's scenic Lake District. Police said two weapons were recovered.

Eight of the wounded were in hospitals, three in critical condition, as of the next day. Home Secretary Theresa May told the House of Commons on June 3 the British government would wait until police had finished investigating the deadly attacks before debating whether UK gun laws needed to be..."

Wait for it...

"needed to be tightened," the Home Secretary said.

What are they going to take away from law-abiding prospective English murder victims next ... scissors?

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the daily Las Vegas Review-Journal, and author of Send in the Waco Killers and the novel The Black Arrow. See www.vinsuprynowicz.com/.

Pro-Gun Dems May Get a Boost

Fox News

With the mid-terms looming large in a year where incumbents are expected to take a beating at the polls many Democratic candidates are favoring gun rights, aiming to win endorsements or positive ratings from pro-2nd amendment groups.

University of New Hampshire Professor of Politics, Andrew Smith, says Democrats started moving away from a strong anti-gun stance in the 90's when many in the party blamed the issue on massive political losses in Congress.

"I think it started with the 1994 elections where a lot of Democrats believe it was the NRA involvement in that election which caused the Democrats to lose the House and the Senate. So they backed off that issue," said Smith.

The National Rifle Association, by far the most powerful pro-gun lobby in the country, spends massive amounts of money to protect the right to bear arms, donating cash to candidates and political action committees. While Republicans receive the majority of the organizations endorsements and money, over the last 10 years, the NRA has dramatically increased funding for Democratic candidates.

"I think finally the message hit home that it's bad politics to be on the wrong side of the 2nd amendment at election time and I think you see that reflective in what's been happening on this issue amongst Democrats in Washington, DC and state legislatures around the country." said Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association.

"Gun ownership in the country amid labor unions folks runs from a low of 48% in California to a high of 60, 70, 80% in states like Missouri, Tennessee, West Virginia. In the 2000 election, half of those union members had a firearm in their home voted for George Bush over Al Gore based on the gun issue and that cost Al Gore the presidency."

According to the center for responsive politics, a non-partisan group that tracks political spending, during the 2002 election cycle the NRA put 8% of their federal campaign contributions toward Democrats. This election cycle, they've received 26% percent.

Though the NRA has yet to release many key endorsements heading into the fall elections some major races could be affected when the word comes down. In the midst of a tough re-election campaign, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could get a boost as the NRA considers endorsing him.
In Indiana, Democratic Senate candidate Brad Ellsworth, a former sheriff, may win the organization's endorsement over Republican Dan Coats.

The slow political shift has frustrated some Democrats that have long fought for tougher gun laws, like New York Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy, who's husband was killed in 1993 when a gunman randomly fired into a commuter train. She wishes fellow Democrats would fight the pressure exerted by the pro-gun lobby.

"They've been very open about saying... 'Carolyn, if the NRA comes against a bill, I gotta vote with the NRA.' They're not going to take that chance. I understand that," said McCarthy of her Democratic colleagues. "Does it bother me? Of course, it bothers me because I'm not trying to take away anyone's right to own a gun."

Depending on where a given candidate hails from, gun rights can be a major issue.

Take the "Live Free or Die" state of New Hampshire where hunting is popular and the 2nd amendment has long been prioritized as a critical personal liberty.

"It's a freedom issue and that's what this is about," said Mitch Kopacz, president of Gun Owners of New Hampshire. "It's the canary in the cage if you will, the firearms... for free speech and other issues. If we have firearms we still have the rest of our rights."

While a contingent of voters will cast ballots strictly adhering to which candidate supports firearm freedoms, many others will prioritize other matters.

"Because the economy is bad and when the economy is bad all other issues get pushed to the side, including the issues about guns," explains Smith. "So I think what you're seeing with Democratic candidates is that the party has moved away from that more doctrinaire position against 2nd amendment rights."

Robocop's Comment:

I remember s few Supreme Court nominies who where "pro-gun". I also saw how they voted in both the Keller and McDonald cases. I advise caution when a Dem with an anti-gun record becomes concerned for our gun rights all of a sudden. Yes, there are a few genuine pro-gun Dems out there. Just do your homework before you vote. If they have a pro-gun past, then they may be pro-gun. If they were pitching support for another "assault weapons" ban, then preach the virtues of the Second Amendment today, be skeptical. Remember the tale of the scorpion and the turtle.

U.N. threatens Second and First Amendments

Washington Times

The United Nations is holding secret closed meetings to work out a global arms trade treaty. The agreement, which could be finished by 2012, is a threat to Americans' Second and First Amendment rights.

"Some type of micro-stamping regulations seems all but inevitable. It is very, very likely," the Heritage Foundation's Theodore R. Bromund, who tracks the U.N., told The Washington Times. "Restrictions on trade between private individuals are somewhat less than 50-50, but you surely can't rule that out. Some kind of gun registration and licensing system is an extremely likely probability." Registration proposals cover guns as well as individual rounds of ammunition.

The Obama administration strongly supports the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty and no doubt will use the process to push for gun-control regulations that it can't get through Congress otherwise.

A lot of baloney is floating in Turtle Bay. Gun registration is being promoted despite evidence that the costly bureaucratic system has been a complete failure in solving any crimes or stopping criminals from getting access to guns everywhere it's been tried. "None of these treaties have a relationship to reality," Mr. Bromund explains. "Terrorists are still going to have access to guns because governments give them guns, and they are still going to be able to give them guns." As an example, he pointed out, "The FARC fighting in Colombia get their guns from Venezuela."

As with everything that goes down at the U.N.'s headquarters on Manhattan's East River, America will pick up a disproportionate share of the tab to implement the treaty, with all those countries considered most "in need" taking another free ride. This is counterproductive even without the usual fraud and waste that hobble U.N. programs.

Gun rights aren't the only thing would-be globocops are targeting in the treaty. There is a U.N. discussion paper advancing "the reduction of violence in the media and in video games" as well as "sustained efforts at reeducation and reorientation of [member state] citizens." Whatever the plan, that can't be good for the First Amendment.

Any U.N. Arms Trade Treaty will undermine freedom around the world. The right to bear arms is an individual's protection against oppression anywhere. It took herculean efforts by George W. Bush's administration to thwart this U.N. power grab a few years ago. Unfortunately, we now have a left-wing White House working to make this dangerous treaty a reality.

© Copyright 2010 The Washington Times

New Suit Against Mayor Richard Daley and the City of Chicago

NRA-ILA

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Fairfax, Va. -- The National Rifle Association is supporting a lawsuit against Mayor Richard Daley and the City of Chicago's newly adopted gun control ordinance, which violates the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago. Last Friday, the City Council rushed through passage of this ordinance in response to the Court's June 28th decision rendering Chicago’s draconian handgun ban unconstitutional.

“The Supreme Court has now said the Second Amendment is an individual freedom for all. And that must have meaning,” said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association. “This decision cannot lead to different measures of freedom, depending on what part of the country you live in. City by city, person by person, this decision must be more than a philosophical victory. An individual right is no right at all if individuals can’t access it.”

Just four days after the Court struck down the nearly 30 year-long handgun bans in Chicago and Oak Park, Mayor Daley and the City of Chicago enacted the most restrictive anti-gun ordinance in the United States. In the words of Corporation Counsel Mara Georges, the top attorney for the City: “We've gone farther than anyone else ever has.” The so-called “Responsible Gun Ownership Ordinance” provisions include: a prohibition on all gun sales inside the City; a prohibition on possession of firearms for self-defense outside the “home” -- even on a patio or in an attached garage; a prohibition on more than one assembled and operable firearm in the home; and a training requirement to obtain a Chicago Firearm Permit. However, range training would be impossible since it will now be unlawful to operate a shooting range inside city limits.

“The Supreme Court told Mayor Daley and the City of Chicago that it has to respect the Second Amendment. By enacting this ordinance, their response is 'Make Us',” said Chris W. Cox, NRA chief lobbyist. “The NRA will not rest until Chicago's law-abiding residents can exercise the same freedoms that our Founding Fathers intended all Americans to have.”

Recent statements from some of Chicago's city officials reflect their complete lack of respect for the Supreme Court decision. Alderman Daniel Solis stated, “the decision made by the Supreme Court is not really in the best interests of our citizens.” Alderman Sharon Denise Dixon denounced what she called the Court’s “blatant… misreading of the law.” And another city council member even went so far as to say, “[w]e’re here today because of their poor judgment."

The case is Benson v. City of Chicago.

Robocop's Comment:

I HOPE this case can be determined BEFORE those two communists are confirmed for the Supreme Court.

Smart Kid!

Judge blasts Iowa sheriff for denying gun permit to man considered ‘weird’

DesMoines Register

A federal judge has strongly chided an Iowa sheriff for denying a gun permit to a government watchdog and anti-abortion advocate who some community members considered “weird.”

It was wrong for Osceola County Sheriff Douglas Weber to deny Paul Dorr, an Ocheyedan father of 11 home-schooled children, a permit that would allow him to carry a concealed weapon, according to a court opinion issued Wednesday.

“The court finds a tsunami, a maelstrom, an avalanche, of direct, uncontroverted evidence in Sheriff Weber’s own testimony to conclude beyond all doubt that he unquestionably violated the First Amendment rights of … Paul Dorr,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Mark W. Bennett of the Northern District of Iowa.

The judge continued: “This is a great reminder that the First Amendment protects the sole individual who may be a gadfly, kook, weirdo, nut job, whacko, and spook, with the same force of protection as folks with more majoritarian and popular views.”

The Dorr case, filed in October 2008, inspired some grassroots activists to push for changes in the state law that gives Iowa sheriff’s almost unlimited discretion to deny weapons permits.

After intense lobbying from Iowa gun rights advocates and the National Rifle Association, state lawmakers earlier this year approved legislation that spells out a narrow list of reasons why a sheriff can deny a permit. The new law takes effect Jan. 1, 2011.

In his ruling Wednesday, Bennett ordered the Osceola County sheriff to immediately issue Dorr a nonprofessional permit to carry a weapon.

The judge also ordered Weber to successfully complete a court-approved course on the United States Constitution within the next five months.

“In denying (Dorr) a concealed weapons permit, Sheriff Weber single-handedly hijacked the First Amendment and nullified its freedoms and protections,” Bennett wrote.

Weber, a Republican who has been either a deputy or a sheriff in Osceola County since 1979, has long known the Dorr family, court documents state.

“Through the years, Sheriff Weber heard comments about (Dorr) which related to him being ‘weird,’” court documents state. Weber also believed there were people in the county who were afraid of him.

Dorr has been arrested and convicted multiple times for a variety of non-violent offenses connected with protests at abortion clinics – such as blocking doors and praying, court records state.

His anti-abortion activities with a group called Rescue the Perishing stretched into South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Georgia and Virginia, records show.

Dorr has also written letters to the editors of newspapers and distributed flyers.

In spring 2007, Dorr made an open records request for information on the compensation and duties of the deputies in the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office.

He received the sheriff’s policy and procedure manual, but he was “also provided with a large bill for the copies,” the judge stated.

Dorr was billed for 90 minutes of photocopying, plus a fee of 10 cents per page for more than 200 pages of documents, court records state.

Dorr successfully obtained a gun permit from the late 1990s to 2006. Weber was sheriff for two of those years.

But in July 2007, Weber turned him down. Weber wrote on the denied application: “Concern from Public. Don’t trust him.”

Weber testified that after Dorr began to work with a group that challenged the county budget: “People started talking about it saying things like, ‘Oh, that guy’s a nut job. Oh, that guy’s whacko.’”

Dorr said he applied for the ability to carry a weapon because he supplemented his income by selling balloons along a parade route in Sioux City. This required him or his relatives to carry as much as $1,500 in cash in fanny packs.

In 2008, one of Dorr’s sons, Alexander, applied for a permit, saying he helped with the balloon business and had gotten death threats connected to his family’s anti-abortion advocacy. Weber denied the son’s permit and informed Dorr that he would deny any further applications from him.

Both Alexander and Paul Dorr believed Weber’s denials of their applications were the result of their advocacy against county spending, court testimony shows.

The judge agreed.

“Dorr was denied a permit precisely because Sheriff Weber believed that his free speech rights offended the majority of voters in Osceola County,” Bennett wrote in his ruling.

Dorr’s son, Alexander, also sued, but Bennett ruled Wednesday that Weber didn’t retaliate against Alexander Dorr for exercising his First Amendment rights to free speech.

Both Dorrs waived their claims to punitive damages.

Royal Douche 07.15.10

The Winner: Chicago City Council

The Reason: Illegally circumventing McDonald v. Chicago by passing outrageous regulations, ignoring the fact that possessing a handgun is a RIGHT before and after this historic Supreme Court ruling.

These regulations include:

-- Limits the number of handguns residents can register to one per month and prohibit residents from having more than one handgun in operating order at any given time.

-- Requires residents in homes with children to keep handguns in lock boxes or equipped with trigger locks.

-- Requires prospective gun owners to take a four-hour class and one-hour training at a gun range. They would have to leave the city for training because Chicago prohibits new gun ranges and limits the use of existing ranges to police officers. Those restrictions were similar to those in an ordinance passed in Washington, D.C., after the high court struck down its ban two years ago.-- Prohibits people from owning a gun if they were convicted of a violent crime, domestic violence or two or more convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Residents convicted of a gun offense would have to register with the police department.

-- Calls for the police department to maintain a registry of every handgun owner in the city, with the names and addresses to be made available to police officers, firefighters and other emergency responders.

Court's Gun Decision An Important Win for Americans Who Want to Defend Themselves

By John Lott

With another closely decided 5 to 4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled today that state governments are not able to ban most Americans from owning most types of handguns. The court ruled that firearms are "essential for self-defense." The court found that if the Second Amendment indeed protects an individual right to own a gun, the notion that the government can't ban all handguns is the minimum protection the Constitution can offer.

Yet, just as with abortion, this is the first of what is likely to be a long string of court decisions.

The decision is an important win for Americans who want the right to self-defense, but the decision also indicates how many questions still must be answered.

When the “Heller” decision was handed down in 2008 striking down Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban and gunlock regulations, Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley predicted disaster. He said that overturning the gun ban was "a very frightening decision" and predicted more deaths along with Wild West-style shootouts and that people "are going to take a gun and they are going to end their lives in a family dispute." Washington’s Mayor Adrian Fenty similarly warned: "More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence."

Yet, Armageddon never arrived.

Washington’s murder rate has plummeted -- falling by 25 percent in 2009 alone. This compares with a national drop of only 7 percent last year. And D.C.'s drop has continued this year.

Comparing Washington’s crime rates from January 1 to June 17 of this year to the same period in 2008, shows a 34 percent drop in murder. This drop puts D.C.'s murder rate back to where it was before the 1977 handgun ban. Indeed, the murder rate is as low as was before 1967.

Other gun crimes have also fallen in Washington. While robberies without guns fell by 7 percent, robberies with gun fell by over 14 percent. Assaults with weapons other than guns fell by 7, but assaults using guns fell by over 20 percent.

The expected narrowness of the court's decision today had already encouraged Mayor Richard Daley and the city of Chicago to threaten last week to effectively undo the Supreme Court decision with new regulations.

Daley promised to quickly adopt all the regulations that Washington adopted in 2008 after its gun ban was struck down, as well as some additional ones. To get a handgun permit in Washington, applicants must pay fees over $550, make four trips to the police station, and take two different tests.

Taking the court's 2008 decision that all handguns can't be banned, Washington went so far as to still ban all semi-automatic handguns that can hold a clip. Chicago plans on doing the same but adding a requirement that gun owners buy insurance that covers any incidents that might arise from the weapon.

Obviously, if Chicago were to impose any tax on newspapers, the courts would strike it down as an infringement on free speech.

But the new Chicago and Washington gun "fees" will be allowed until the Supreme Court revisits that issue.

Where that line will be drawn on this closely divided court will be influenced by its newest member and the potential new member whose confirmation hearings get underway today.

Neither the latest justice, Sonia Sotomayor nor the next potential justice, Elena Kagan are sympathetic to an individual's right to self-defense.

In Washington, about 1,000 people now have permits to own handguns. With the gunlock law that made it illegal to have a loaded gun now struck down, over 70,000 people have permits for long guns that can now be used protect victims.

Yet, if over 70,000 armed citizens can produce 26 fewer murders and 375 violent crimes, imagine what can be accomplished if even more citizens are allowed to defend themselves.

We can only hope that Chicago will not adopt such high fees and stiff regulations that only allow the wealthiest will have the opportunity to defend themselves.

John R. Lott, Jr. is a FOXNews.com contributor. He is an economist and author of "More Guns, Less Crime " the third edition of which was published by the University of Chicago Press in May.

Gun Grabbers Treat Criminals As Victims

Washington Times

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Violence Policy Center (VPC) are peddling the notion that concealed-handgun permit holders are a danger to society. Last month, the center released a report claiming that in the past three years, 166 people were killed by holders of concealed-weapon permits. A closer look at the evidence suggests that many of the so-called victims of gun violence were criminals. Because more than 6 million Americans hold permits, it is important to set the record straight.

As one of the most populous states with a right-to-carry law, Florida has the most concealed-handgun permits. Between Oct. 1, 1987, and May 31, the state issued them to 1.8 million individuals. So far, just 167 permits have been revoked over any type of firearms-related violation. Most of those involved trivial, nonviolent infractions. To put that figure into perspective, the annual revocation rate is a minuscule 0.00017 percent, with just three revocations since January 2008. More people are killed every year by falling vending machines than by holders of a concealed-weapon permit.

You wouldn't know that from the rhetoric of the gun-control groups, which portray Florida as a dangerous place to live because of its laws. According to the VPC report, the Sunshine State accounted for 17 of the 96 "killer" permit holders nationwide, far more than any other state.

A recent Fox News investigation shot holes in the study. No charges were ever brought in seven of the Florida cases. One case clearly did not involve a permit holder - the person was, in fact, charged with illegally carrying a concealed handgun. Two cases that are still pending apparently involved self-defense, with one local newspaper account suggesting that the permit holder had a "strong case" to show that he had acted properly. Another case involved the accidental discharge of a firearm. The gun grabbers score all of these incidents as kills, but at least nine of them are examples of right-to-carry laws being used by permit holders to protect themselves and their families.

Three cases did result in "convictions," but they hardly represent clear-cut examples. One involved an accidental discharge and a conviction for involuntary manslaughter. In another case, a convicted felon sparked the incident by confronting the permit holder. According to the prosecutor, the permit holder "was in some way defending himself during an escalating altercation between the men caught on the security video" and that, "People can look at that tape and interpret it two or three different ways." His conviction rested on the question of whether he had done enough to avoid the confrontation.

The Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center show their desperation by twisting legitimate examples of self-defense into crimes. The simple fact is that most gun owners are law-abiding citizens. Suggesting that burglars, rapists and other hardened criminals are "victims" of permit holders is a stretch, even for these groups. The real statistics show that America is a safer place thanks to more of its citizens having a right to protect themselves and their families.

© Copyright 2010 The Washington Times, LLC.

Why Guns Are Good

By John Stossel

You know what the mainstream media think about guns and our freedom to carry them.

Pierre Thomas of ABC: "When someone gets angry or when they snap, they are going to be able to have access to weapons."

Chris Matthews of MSNBC: "I wonder if in a free society violence is always going to be a part of it if guns are available."

Keith Olbermann, also of MSNBC, who usually can't be topped for absurdity: "Organizations like the NRA ... are trying to increase deaths by gun in this country."

"Trying to?" Well, I admit that I bought that nonsense for years. Living in Manhattan, working at ABC, everyone agreed that guns are evil. And that the NRA is evil. (Now that the NRA has agreed to a sleazy deal with congressional Democrats on political speech censorship, maybe some of its leaders areevil, but that's for another column.)

Now I know that I was totally wrong about guns. Now I know that more guns means -- hold onto your seat -- lesscrime.

(This will be the topic, by the way, tomorrow night on my Fox Business News show.)

How can that be, when guns kill almost 30,000 Americans a year?

Because while we hear about the murders and accidents, we don't often hear about the crimes stopped because would-be victims showed a gun and scared criminals away.

Those thwarted crimes and lives saved usually aren't reported to police (sometimes for fear the gun will be confiscated), and when they are reported, the media tend to ignore them. No bang, no news.

This state of affairs produces a distorted public impression of guns. If you only hear about the crimes and accidents, and never about lives saved, you might think gun ownership is folly.

But, hey, if guns save lives, it logically follows that gun laws cost lives.

Suzanna Hupp and her parents were having lunch at Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, when a man began shooting diners with his handgun, even stopping to reload. Suzanna's parents were two of the 23 people killed. (20 more were wounded.)

Suzanna owned a handgun, but because Texas law, at the time, did not permit her to carry it with her, she left it in her car. She's confident that she could have stopped the shooting spree if she had her gun. (Texas has since changed its law.)

Today, 40 states issue permits to competent, law-abiding adults to carry concealed handguns (Vermont and Alaska have the most libertarian approach: no permit needed. Arizona is about to join that exclusive club.) Every time a carry law was debated, anti-gun activists predicted outbreaks of gun violence after fender-benders, card games and domestic quarrels.

What happened?

John Lott, in his book "More Guns, Less Crime," explains that crime fell by 10 percent in the year after the laws were passed . A reason for the drop in crime may have been that criminals suddenly worried that their next victim might be armed.

Indeed, criminals in states with high civilian gun ownership were the most worried about encountering armed victims.

In Canada and Britain, both with tough gun-control laws, almost half of all burglaries occur when residents are home. But in the United States, where many households contain guns, only 13 percent of burglaries happen when someone's at home.

Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in the Heller case that Washington, D.C.'s ban on handgun ownership was unconstitutional. District politicians then loosened the law but still have so many restrictions that there are no gun shops in the city and just 800 people have received permits. Nevertheless, contrary to the mayor's prediction, robbery and other violent crime are down.

Because Heller applied only to Washington, that case was not the big one. "McDonald v. Chicago" is the big one, and the Supreme Court is expected to rule on that next week. Otis McDonald is a 76-year-old man who lives in a dangerous neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. He wants to buy a handgun, but Chicago forbids it.

If the Supremes say McDonald has that right, then restrictive gun laws will fall throughout America.

Despite my earlier bias, I now understand that striking down those laws will probably save lives.

National Rifle Association Hails Historic Victory on Second Amendment Freedom in McDonald v. City of Chicago

NRA-ILA

Fairfax, Va. -- The National Rifle Association of America today praised the U.S. Supreme Court's historic decision in another landmark Second Amendment case. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that the Second Amendment applies not just to Washington, D.C. and other federal enclaves, but protects the rights of all Americans throughout the country. The opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago brings an end to the nearly 30 year-long handgun ban that the city has imposed on its law-abiding citizens.

“This is a landmark decision,” said NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre. “The Second Amendment -- as every citizen's constitutional right -- is now a real part of American constitutional law. The NRA will work to ensure this constitutional victory is not transformed into a practical defeat by activist judges defiant city councils or cynical politicians who seek to pervert, reverse or nullify the Supreme Court's McDonald decision through Byzantine labyrinths of restrictions and regulations that render the Second Amendment inaccessible, unaffordable or otherwise impossible to experience in a practical, reasonable way.”

As a party to the case, the NRA participated in oral arguments before the Court in March. The NRA persuasively argued that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment and that handgun bans, like those in the City of Chicago and the Village of Oak Park, are unconstitutional under any standard of judicial review. This same view was shared in friend of the court briefs by a bipartisan group of 309 members of Congress from both chambers, 38 state attorneys general, and hundreds of state legislators. Public opinion polls show that it is also shared by the overwhelming majority of the American people.

“This decision makes absolutely clear that the Second Amendment protects the God-given right of self-defense for all law-abiding Americans, period,” said Chris W. Cox, NRA chief lobbyist. “Ironically, while crime in Chicago runs rampant and lawmakers there call on the National Guard for help, Mayor Daley has insisted on leaving the residents of his city defenseless. Today's opinion puts the law back on the side of the law-abiding. We will be watching closely to make sure that Chicago abides by both the letter and the spirit of the Supreme Court's decision.”

Gun Control and Mass Murders

Washington Times

It wasn’t supposed to happen in England, with its very strict gun-control laws. And yet last week, Derrick Bird shot twelve people to death and wounded eleven others in the northwestern county of Cumbria. A headline in the London Times read: “Toughest laws in the world could not stop Cumbria tragedy.”

But surely this was an aberration. Because America has the most guns, multiple-victim public shootings are an American thing, right? No, not at all. Contrary to public perception, Western Europe, most of whose countries have much tougher gun laws than the United States, has experienced many of the worst multiple-victim public shootings. Particularly telling, all the multiple-victim public shootings in Western Europe have occurred in places where civilians are not permitted to carry guns. The same is true in the United States: All the public shootings in which more than three people have been killed have occurred in places where civilians may not legally bring guns.

Look at recent history. Where have the worst K–12 school shootings occurred? Nearly all of them in Europe. The very worst one occurred in a high school in Erfurt, Germany, in 2002, where 18 were killed. The second-worst took place in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996, where 16 kindergartners and their teacher were killed. The third-worst, with 15 dead, happened in Winnenden, Germany. The fourth-worst was in the U.S. — Columbine High School in 1999, leaving 13 dead. The fifth-worst, with eleven murdered, occurred in Emsdetten, Germany.

It may be a surprise to those who believe in gun control that Germany was home to three of the five worst attacks. Though not quite as tight as the U.K.’s regulations, Germany’s gun-control laws are some of the most restrictive in Europe. German gun licenses are valid for only three years, and to obtain one, the person must demonstrate such hard-to-define characteristics as trustworthiness, and must also convince authorities that he needs a gun. This is on top of prohibitions on gun ownership for those with mental disorders, drug or alcohol addictions, violent or aggressive tendencies, or felony convictions.

The phenomenon is not limited to school attacks. Multiple-victim public shootings in general appear to be at least as common in Western Europe as they are here. The following is a partial list of attacks since 2001. As mentioned, all of them occurred in gun-free zones — places where guns in the hands of civilians are outlawed.

-Zug, Switzerland, Sept. 27, 2001: A man whose lawsuits had been denied murdered 14 members of a cantonal parliament.

-Tours, France, Oct. 29, 2001: Four people were killed and ten wounded when a French railway worker started shooting at a busy intersection.

-Nanterre, France, March 27, 2002: A man killed eight city-council members after a council meeting.

-Erfurt, Germany, April 26, 2002: A former student killed 18 at a secondary school.

-Freising, Germany, Feb. 19, 2002: Three people killed and one wounded.

-Turin, Italy, Oct. 15, 2002: Seven people killed on a hillside overlooking the city.

-Madrid, Spain, Oct. 1, 2006: A man killed two employees and wounded another at a company that had fired him.

-Emsdetten, Germany, Nov. 20, 2006: A former student murdered eleven people at a high school.

-Tuusula, Finland, Nov. 7, 2007: Seven students and the principal killed at a high school.

-Naples, Italy, Sept. 18, 2008: Seven dead and two seriously wounded in a public meeting hall. (This incident is not included in the totals given below because it may have involved the Mafia.)

-Kauhajoki, Finland, Sept. 23, 2008: Ten people shot to death at a college.

-Winnenden, Germany, March 11, 2009: A 17-year-old former student killed 15 people, including nine students and three teachers.

-Lyon, France, March 19, 2009: Ten people injured when a man opened fire on a nursery school.

-Athens, Greece, April 10, 2009: Three people killed and two injured by a student at a vocational college.

-Rotterdam, Netherlands, April 11, 2009: Three people killed and one injured at a crowded café.

-Vienna, Austria, May 24, 2009: One dead and 15 wounded in an attack on a Sikh temple.

-Espoo, Finland, Dec. 31, 2009: Four people shot to death at a mall.

-Cumbria, England, June 2, 2010: Twelve killed by a British taxi driver.

So how does this compare with the United States? Bill Landes at the University of Chicago and I have collected data on all the multiple-victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1999 (for a discussion of that information, see the just-released updated third edition of More Guns, Less Crime). If one looks at just those cases where four or more people have been killed in an attack, on average 10.6 people died in such attacks each year; the worst attack was the Luby’s Cafeteria shooting in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, in which 23 people died.

I don’t have exactly comparable data for Europe; however, the data I have been able to collect for the nine and a half years from 2001 through now indicate that on average some 12.5 people per year have died in such attacks. To be sure, Western Europe has a lower per capita rate, since its population over the last decade has been about 48 percent larger than the U.S. population over the earlier period (about 387 million to 262 million). Still, the fact that there are such attacks at all belies the conventional wisdom.

Large multiple-victim public shootings are exceedingly rare events, but they garner massive news attention, and the misperceptions they produce are hard to erase. When I have been interviewed by foreign journalists, even German ones, they usually start off by asking why multiple-victim public shootings are such an American problem. And of course, they are astonished when I remind them of the attacks in their own countries and point out that this is not an American problem, it is a universal problem, but with a common factor: The attacks occur in public places where civilians are banned from carrying guns.

The Tide Turns In The Battle For Gun Rights

Examiner.com

The tide turns in the battle for gun rights as the Brady Campaign withers away

As gun rights activists await the upcoming decision in the McDonald vs. Chicago Supreme Court case, new evidence emerges that, in this post-Heller decision world, the public has soured on the bitter taste of gun control.

The latest evidence of the declining public support for restrictions on gun rights is in the data released today by the Federal Election Commission on the private donations and expenditures of the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence - Voter Education PAC

The Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence is the flagship group for the gun control effort. The Brady Campaign absorbed the Million Mom March in 2001 when that organization's membership dropped so low as to be no longer self-sustaining.

Information provided by the Center for Responsive Politics , and derived from the FEC reports, shows that the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence - Voter Education PAC, raised an all-time high of over $1.7 million in the 2000 election cycle and distributed over $1.6 million of those funds.

Contrast this to the more recent 2008 election cycle where the PAC raised just over $15,000 and spent just over $54,000.

The 2010 election cycle is still ongoing, but the numbers look no better: So far only $2,500 has been raised and just $4,545 spent.

Browsing through the charts and information at the Center for Responsive Politics shows fewer gun control advocates willing to spend their own money on that agenda. In the 2000 election year cycle 320 individual donors gave a total of $329,996. Contrast that to 2008 where three donors donated a total of $15,000.

So far, for the 2010 election cycle, only one donor has made a single contribution of $2,500.

As the Brady Campaign goes, so does public support for gun control. That's why the huge drop in funds raised, money spent, and individual donors is so telling.

The conclusion is clear: The public no longer believes the gun control lies. Now is the time to work to get that message to the government by redoubling efforts to elect pro-gun candidates and kick out those politicians who would deny us our basic human rights.

Another Reason To Love Arizona

Arizona Daily Star

Gloria DiCenco was chatting amiably with a few Italian speakers at Beyond Bread on North Campbell Avenue on April 20 when armed men began coming in.

First there were two, then more. Finally, maybe 20 people carrying holstered guns and, in some cases, ammunition, arrived and ordered food, DiCenco said. A hush fell over the restaurant, she said, and her group's happy mood turned tense.

It happened that her Italian conversation club crossed paths with a group of local advocates of "open carry" - unconcealed carrying of firearms. And the open-carry advocates saw their Beyond Bread dinner quite differently - as noticeably unremarkable.

"That's the whole point - nothing happened," said J.D. "Duke" Schechter, who was among the group of gun carriers.

As Arizona's gun laws grow more liberal, business owners, employees and customers are increasingly confronting the issue of firearms in private businesses. In Arizona, a business may prohibit firearms on its premises, but some have found that doing so alienates customers who may have been carrying weapons concealed all along, or who simply believe in the right to bear arms. A less organized cadre of customers, like DiCenco, wonder why people feel the need to carry guns everywhere.

Facing the firearms issue is something many business people, including Beyond Bread owner Shelby Collier, would rather not do.

"We're really trying to take a neutral position," Collier said. "To the extent that that becomes a problem, I may have to take a position. I hope it doesn't come to that."

The issue didn't begin with Arizona's new concealed weapons law, which as of July 29 will allow people over age 21 (and not prohibited from possessing a weapon) to carry a concealed gun without a permit. However, it's become more pronounced as business owners realize how many people are carrying firearms, and as gun-rights advocates push for public acceptance.

Pro-gun website

One locally based website, www.GunBurger.com maintains databases of restaurants that prohibit and permit firearms. The site encourages gun owners to "vote with your dollars" when they encounter gun-prohibiting businesses and "take your business elsewhere."

The Arizona Citizens Defense League, a nonprofit group that supports expanding gun owners' legal rights, provides templates of business-sized cards on its website that users can print out to hand to business owners who prohibit firearms. Under a logo indicating no guns means no money, the cards say "You have made a decision to ban guns in your store. I am going to respect that decision and take my gun and my money to a competing business."

Pro-gun arguments have worked with some Tucson restaurant owners. The Hungry Fox, a bustling diner at 4637 E. Broadway, put up a sign prohibiting guns last year but quickly heard protests from customers who, unknown to the restaurant's owners and employees, were concealed-weapon carriers. The restaurant's management quickly reversed the policy.

"We were going to lose a lot of customers, and we can't afford to lose even one," said Dene Little, the restaurant's manager.

Even at bars, the question of whether to prohibit firearms isn't totally clear. Under state law, bar owners may permit firearms or prohibit them. For alcohol-serving establishments, state law dictates the wording, appearance and placement of signs prohibiting firearms.

Nelson Miller, owner of the Trident Grill, 2033 E. Speedway, put up such a sign last year. A retired Navy SEAL, Miller said he did so because "I don't trust other people with them (guns) as much as I trust myself."

But then he started talking to people who convinced him that the sign would not stop someone with evil intent from carrying a gun inside, and could make innocent people more vulnerable.

"The only person who cares about the rules is the guy who cares about the rules," Miller said. "I would just simply lose customers who were abiding by the law."

activists disagree

Anti-gun-violence activists dispute the notion that "law-abiding" gun carriers pose no risk. No one knows when a formerly law-abiding citizen will either break the law or otherwise misuse a firearm, said Daniel Vice, senior attorney at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

"Any time you have loaded weapons ready to fire, you increase the chance that someone will get shot," Vice said. "That can lead to accidents or shootings in the heat of the moment. Any argument can quickly escalate to a life-or-death situation if there's a loaded gun."

Customers and business owners aren't the only people who should be concerned, Vice noted. For employees, he said, the question of whether firearms are permitted could affect their workplace safety.

Starbucks, which has been at the center of a debate over firearms in businesses this year, has decided to allow guns in its stores in states where the law permits it. But it prohibits employees from carrying guns.

The policies apply only to Starbucks' company-owned stores, which make up about 61 percent of its 11,121 U.S. locations.

"Allowing guns into the workplace endangers their employees," said Vice, whose group is collecting signatures to ask Starbucks to change its policies.

He also called the company's policy disingenuous, because state law allows a business to prohibit firearms just as it may permit them.

In a statement, Starbucks said it doesn't want to put employees in the position of asking armed customers to leave.

discount offered

Beneath the debate over firearms in businesses lies a deeper disagreement over the place of firearms in society.

Many gun owners view carrying a firearm as a fundamental right - or even a responsibility - in that it allows for self-defense.

That belief helped underwrite Roy Schaefer's new business, Monkey Burger, at 5350 E. Broadway. A start-up investor made it a condition of his investment that Schaefer permit guns and give a 10 percent discount to concealed-carry permit holders.

Initially neutral on the issue, Schaefer has come to believe in the right to bear arms in public.

"I just feel that they're appropriate and should be allowed in the public with people who are responsible," he said.

He's planning to open a second restaurant, this one downtown, on Aug. 1. It will have the same firearm policies, Schaefer said.

But DiCenco, the Beyond Bread customer, said allowing guns can harm a business, too.

"I found it was pretty hard to have fun and joke in a room where there's a large group of people who are heavily armed."

key Arizona gun laws

• Guns in businesses: Arizona law does not explicitly permit or prohibit firearms in private businesses. But carrying a firearm into a private business might be considered trespassing if the business is clearly marked with a sign forbidding guns, especially if the gun carrier is asked not to enter while armed.

• Guns in bars: Establishments where alcohol is sold may permit firearms, but a person carrying a firearm in such a business may not consume alcohol. If the owner wishes to ban firearms, a sign with a specific design, wording and placement must be posted. The sign is available for downloading at the website of the Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control, azliquor.gov/firearms.html

• Carrying a gun: As of July 29, anyone over 21 in Arizona may carry a gun, concealed or in the open, as long as the person is not a prohibited possessor, such as a felon or a visitor or student from another country.

• Where guns are prohibited: State law explicitly prohibits guns in certain places, most notably any posted government office, from the lowliest municipal building to the state Capitol, although they are now required to offer storage. Carrying a firearm is also prohibited on school grounds, at election polling places, and at hydroelectric or nuclear plants.

The U.N. Gun Grabber

Global Small Arms Treaty threatens your right to self defense

Washington Times

American gun owners might not feel besieged, but they should. This week, the Obama administration announced its support for the United Nations Small Arms Treaty. This international agreement poses real risks for freedom both in the United States and around the world by making it more difficult - if not outright illegal - for law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms.

The U.N. claims that guns used in armed conflicts cause 300,000 deaths worldwide every year, an inordinate number of which are the result of internal civil strife within individual nations. The solution proposed by transnationalists to keep rebels from getting guns is to make the global pool of weapons smaller through government action. According to recent deliberations regarding the treaty, signatory countries would be required to "prevent, combat and eradicate" various classes of guns to undermine "the illicit trade in small arms." Such a plan would necessarily lead to confiscation of personal firearms.

This may seem like a reasonable solution to governments that don't trust their citizens, but it represents a dangerous disregard for the safety and freedom of everybody. First of all, not all insurgencies are bad. As U.S. history shows, one way to get rid of a despotic regime is to rise up against it. That threat is why authoritarian regimes such as Syria, Cuba, Rwanda, Vietnam, Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone endorse gun control.

Political scientist Rudy Rummel estimates that the 15 worst regimes during the 20th century killed 151 million of their own citizens, which works out to 1.5 million victims per year. Even if all 300,000 annual deaths from armed conflicts can be blamed on the small-arms trade (which they cannot), governments are a bigger threat to most people than their neighbors.

This U.N. treaty will lead to more gun control in America. "After the treaty is approved and it comes into force, you will find out that it has this implication or that implication and it requires the Congress to adopt some measure that restricts ownership of firearms," former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton warns. "The [Obama] administration knows it cannot obtain this kind of legislation purely in a domestic context. ... They will use an international agreement as an excuse to get domestically what they couldn't otherwise."

The U.N. Small Arms Treaty opens a back door for the Obama administration to force through gun control regulations. Threats to the Second Amendment are as real today as ever.

© Copyright 2010 The Washington Times

British Gun Control Works...Not Really

12 Killings Confirmed In Cumbria Shootings

SNIP

Police have now identified the man they are hunting after a series of shootings along the Cumbrian coast this morning. They are looking for Derrick Bird, 52, of Rowrah near Frizington.

SNIP

The 25 injured are in “a range of conditions”, says DCC Hyde.

SNIP

Mr Reed told BBC Radio 4’s The World At One: “This kind of thing doesn’t happen in our part of the world. We have got one of the lowest, if not the lowest, crime rates in the country.

I bet the families of the victims feel so much better about that statistic.

SNIP

“The public were incredibly shocked. The public had never seen anything like this before.

Bullshit. Something like this did happen, and your government responded with one of the most draconian gun laws in the world. This really helped as you can see.

SNIP

From our calculations, the death toll appears to be as follows: two killed before Bird arrived in Whitehaven; two in Whitehaven; two in Egremont; three in Seascale; two in Haile; and one in Gosforth.These figures are provisional though, as they have been put together from witness statements and photographs.

Robocop's Comment:

How can this be? I thought it was virtually impossible for someone to get a firearm in Britain. I bet all of those law abiding former gun owners in Britain are feeling alot better knowing that the sacrifice of their gun rights was in vain. Consider this a lesson learned. All things being constant, Britain will probably pass more restrictive gun laws. Maybe a ban of guns in movies, illustrations, etc...Now I am willing to bet that if someone had a legally carried firearm the outcome would have been a different outcome. But this would be strictly fantasy seeing the reality of European socialism. My heart goes out to the victims and their families. May their deaths not be in vain. To those that left them defenseless, their blood is on your hands.

Follow Up On Six Flags

Got a reply from Six Flags Texas regarding the gun tattoo incident:

Thank you for contacting Six Flags Over Texas.



The seasonal employee’s actions were inappropriate and we have addressed this matter with them. In addition we are in the process of reviewing our guest services policy with the employee to make sure they understand. Six Flags Over Texas representatives have since spoken with Ms. Osborn and apologized.



Please let me assure you that your comments have been shared with our Management Team, as we are continually striving to improve our Guest First experience.



Once again, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. It is only with your input that we can build a lasting friendship with you and your family.



Have a Six Flags Day!



Tammy Montgomery

GSR Supervisor

Phone: 817-640-8900, ext. 3139

Fax: 817-607-6237

Six Flags Refuses Admission To Mom With Gun Tattoos

KSDK

NBC -- A 30-year-old mother of three said she was refused entrance into Six Flags Over Texas because of her tattoo.

Samantha Osborn, a Texas girl through-and-through, has two six-shooters surrounded by yellow roses tattooed on her chest.

"I got it because I love Texas," she said. "I thought of cowboys and six-shooters and the yellow rose of Texas."

But a Six Flags employee stopped her at the entrance gate when she and her husband, Matt, went to the Arlington amusement park to celebrate his birthday.

"We tried to enter, one employee grabbed me and said my chest tattoo was offensive and that I may not be allowed into the park," Osborn said. "I was flabbergasted."

She said the employee told her Six Flags was a family-friendly place.

Osborn told the employee she was the mother of three girls.

"She said it was as offensive as a swastika and that she would sell me a $5 shirt to cover myself up and that they didn't let people with swastikas into Six Flags, and that my tattoo condoned violence," Osborn said.

Six Flags' dress code says park management can deny customers entrance if their clothing is deemed inappropriate or vulgar.

The code does not mention tattoos.

The Osborns, determined to celebrate the birthday, eventually entered the park through another line without being bothered, but the damage had been done.

"It just soured the whole experience, and we left," Samantha Osborn said.

Osborn, who has several tattoos, said she has never been harassed about them.

Her husband's tattoos are much more visible than hers and cover about 70 percent of his body.

"I've never been denied access or even asked to cover up entering any public place, ever," he said.

Samantha Osborn complained to Six Flags about what she called unfair and discriminatory treatment.

She later received a letter of apology by e-mail from Cindi Brickett, Six Flags guest services supervisor.

"We are dedicated to providing a fun-filled day that goes beyond your expectations," the e-mail said. "On behalf of the entire management team, I sincerely apologize that we did not meet that goal and hope that you will not allow this experience to diminish your impression of our park."

Brickett also promised the employee would be dealt with appropriately.

"I received an e-mail, which wasn't a phone call. I would have really liked to speak to a person," Osborn said.

The Osborns said the experience left a sour taste in their mouths.

They don't plan on returning to Six Flags.

Robocop's Comment:

Ok, she looks a little rough. But here cool tattoos should not have even given that Six Flags employee a second look. I think we need to help prevent something like this from happening again. So for all of you civic minded folk, here is the contact information for Six Flags Texas to voice your concern.

Guest Relations at (817) 640-8900 x3139

or leave an online message on this FORM.

Washington's New Gun Rules Shift Constitutional Debate

Wall Street Journal

By GARY FIELDS

WASHINGTON—Mark Snyder, an amateur biathlete, wanted to buy a .22-caliber bolt-action rifle for target shooting and figured the process would take about a week. After nearly six weeks, six visits to police departments and $300 in fees, he secured his rifle.

"I was not expecting a free ride," said Mr. Snyder, 45, "but this is an obstacle course they put in place."

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the District of Columbia's 32-year ban on handguns in 2008, a victory for the gun-rights lobby that seemed to promise a more permissive era in America's long tussle over gun ownership. Since then, the city has crafted rules that are proving a new, powerful deterrent to residents who want to buy firearms.

Legal gun owners must be registered by the city, a red flag for many in the gun-rights community concerned that registration lists could be used to confiscate firearms. The District limits the number of bullets a gun can hold and the type of firearm residents can buy. It requires that by next year manufacturers sell guns equipped with a special identification technology—one that hasn't yet been adopted by the industry.





The Supreme Court is now deliberating a case challenging handgun bans in Chicago and Oak Park, Ill., which are similar to the former ban in Washington, D.C., and is widely expected to side with gun-rights groups. The experience of Washington, D.C., however, suggests a pro-gun ruling by the Supreme Court doesn't mean an end to the matter. Here, the battle over whether residents can own guns has been replaced by a fresh debate over whether lawmakers can restrict legal gun ownership.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia's non-voting representative in Congress, is blunt about the point of the city's laws: discouraging gun ownership.

"To get them you have to go through a bureaucracy that makes it difficult," she said in an interview. Her constituents tend to oppose firearms because of gun violence, she said. "Nobody thinks we would have fewer shootings and fewer homicides if we had more relaxed gun laws."

Kenneth Barnes, 65, became a D.C. gun-law activist after his son was shot to death in his clothing store in 2001. He supports the city's current gun law. "I have no issue with the right to bear arms," but the Supreme Court's decision gave the city the right to set gun laws for its citizens, he said. "What we're talking about is self determination."

In 2009, the first full year the law was in effect, homicides in the city dropped to 143 from 186 in 2008. The 2009 total was the lowest since 1966.

In its 5-4 decision in 2008, known as District of Columbia v. Heller, the court ruled that the Second Amendment includes an individual right to self-defense. In doing so, it struck down the city's 1976 ordinance that effectively banned possession of handguns. The ruling offered little advice on what level of regulation might be permissible, giving the city room to maneuver within the ruling's broad outlines.

One question now is what impact Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan might have on future gun cases. Her public record on gun rights is limited primarily to positions she held as a Clinton White House lawyer and as a clerk for the late Justice Thurgood Marshall. The National Rifle Association has said it has some concerns and will work with the Senate to formulate some "tough questions" for the nominee on gun rights. With the five-judge majority that ruled on Heller intact, Ms. Kagan's impact on gun rights cases could be limited in the near future.

Gun-control supporters say the District is acting within the Constitution, in that Heller didn't outlaw all gun control. "From our perspective, there's a broad range of gun-control steps that can be taken that would be constitutional post-Heller," said Chad Ramsey of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, said the city's new rules strike against the spirit of the Supreme Court's decision. "Can you go out and buy guns in D.C. and defend yourself as the Supreme Court said you should be able to? No. The citizens can't experience the freedom from a practical level. What good is winning it philosophically?"

In the months since the Heller decision through April, the city has registered 1,071 guns, including 756 handguns and 315 "long" guns, such as rifles. That's a rate of about 181 guns per 100,000 residents. Before the Supreme Court decision, the rate of registered guns in Washington was close to zero.

Across the U.S., federal law-enforcement agencies estimate the total number of guns is between 200 million and 350 million, which results in a rate between 65,000 to 114,000 guns per 100,000 people nationally. A 2006 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center found gun ownership in 34% of all homes.

Right now, the legal advantage lies with the District. In a federal District Court ruling in March, Judge Ricardo Urbina upheld the city's gun law, writing that the Supreme Court didn't rule gun registration "unconstitutional as a general matter." The judge concluded the city had the power to limit the kinds of firearms permissible and the size of ammunition magazines.

Gun-rights groups and several plaintiffs, including Mr. Snyder the biathlete, are appealing the ruling. Mr. Synder joined the lawsuit after calling the NRA to complain about the registration process. Stephen Halbrook, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, predicts the case will come back to the Supreme Court for a second review of District gun laws.

The battle in the District stands in contrast with other areas of the country where gun-rights advocates have been enjoying success. Last month, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a law permitting residents 21 years and older to carry concealed weapons without permits. On April 19, armed protesters assembled in federal parks in Virginia, including Gravelly Point Park directly across the Potomac River from Washington, taking advantage of a law signed in 2009 by President Barack Obama that allows visitors to carry loaded firearms into national parks as long as the state allows it.


After the Heller decision, the District's city council passed the Firearms Registration Amendment Act of 2008.

Under the law, would-be gun owners must go through a process requiring fingerprints, photographs and the detailing of some job history.

Applicants have to take a 20-question test on the District's gun laws and regulations. There is a five-hour class, including at least one hour at a gun range, although the city doesn't have a public one. Buyers are required to find trainers from a list approved by police. There is a vision exam, and once the process is complete, the gun must be taken back to the police to be fired for a ballistic identification.

The registration expires after three years and must be renewed. If it lapses, the police can seize the gun, and for a first offense, the owner could be jailed for up to one year and fined $1,000.

The law designates certain guns as assault weapons that can't be bought in the city. It limits the size of the ammunition-feeding devices to no more than 10 bullets. Many common semi-automatic pistols can hold more than that.

In 2011, the city will require semi-automatic pistols owned in the city to be produced with devices that imprint shell casings with a code or serial number as part of the firing process. That would make it easier to link shell casings to guns. The technology, known as micro-stamping or micro-engraving, is in its infancy, and most manufacturers haven't yet adopted it.

Peter Nickles, the District's Attorney General, acknowledged the law requires technology that "may not exist right now. But if you build it they will come. While we are not there yet, there is a lot of science out there and a lot of development."

Many jurisdictions around the U.S. have elements of the District of Columbia's law, but few have all of them. Only Hawaii has a gun registration process, in place since 1988, as strict as the District's and only California has a micro-stamping law, though it hasn't been implemented yet. Gun-rights and gun-control groups agree the city's law is among the most restrictive in the country.

Attorney General Nickles contends the District is on sound legal footing. "The effort that was made by the city council was to come up with a law that balanced the Supreme Court's requirement that we authorize firearms for use in self-defense in the home with public safety," he said. "I think we struck the right balance."

The city is surrounded by jurisdictions that don't have the same laws as the District, Mr. Nickles said. The result is there is a proliferation of illegal guns in the city. "There's no denying the fact that we have a helluva lot of illegal guns on the streets," he said, but the solution isn't to "arm everyone."

Even without the new law, Washington, D.C., presents obstacles to the would-be gun buyer. There are no gun stores in the city. It has few federally licensed firearms dealers—businesses that can transfer a handgun into the city that was bought elsewhere.

The city changed its zoning laws in 2009 to permit gun stores, but no business has tried to open one, according to the Attorney General's office. Only one federally licensed firearms dealer, C.S. Exchange, is performing transfers to the public. Under the law, handguns bought outside the city must be transferred through a licensed gun dealer in the city.

Charles Sykes, owner of C.S. Exchange, conducts business by appointment only. He estimates fees for registration, testing, fingerprinting and transfers can double the cost of a gun. He doesn't think demand would support a fully operational gun store. These days, he can go weeks without making a transfer. "At first you had a rush of people going down to police headquarters to pick up information" on buying guns after the 2008 court decision, he said. "But they didn't rush to get firearms."

Lenwood Johnson sits on a District advisory commission, a body elected to represent neighborhoods with various city authorities. In January, he talked about owning an unregistered gun in a short article in the Washington City Paper, an alternative weekly.

Two days later, he said, the D.C. Metropolitan Police appeared at his apartment on a Saturday and asked to search it. They left after finding nothing.

The following Tuesday, Mr. Johnson, 50, went to the police's gun-registration section and picked up an information packet.

Three days later, police came to his apartment again, with a warrant, after he'd left for work. "They searched every inch, every box, every drawer, the dirty clothes hamper, the cookie jar, and didn't find anything," Mr. Johnson said.

“ I wonder how D.C. residents would feel if there were similar hurdles to jump through for the right to vote or to form a religious association or to publish a newspaper. ”

—Brian Kullman

Mr. Johnson said he keeps the gun with relatives in Maryland and decided not to bring the gun into the city and register it. "After what I went through with the District, it's just not worth it." A long-time NRA member, he said he is not an activist and doesn't want to draw attention by raising a ruckus. "I just want to legally own a gun," he said.

Lt. Jon Shelton, who commands the firearms-registration section and gun-control unit, said police went to Mr. Johnson after his public statements that he owned an unregistered gun. "We would be neglecting our duty if we did not."

After the Supreme Court's Heller decision, Lt. Shelton, who has been an officer 22 years, said he expected a "much larger response," than there has been in terms of residents buying firearms. "I had geared up. I anticipated it."

Mr. Snyder, the biathlete, said he contacted the registration division Jan. 20, 2009, about registering a rifle if he bought one. "I wanted to do everything by the book," he said.

He says he was told by police he wouldn't be required to submit to the new training requirements, which didn't go into effect until April 2009. "The steps they gave me were to get the paperwork, buy the gun, have the dealer fill out the paperwork, return the paperwork to the police with a photo, take a test with 20 questions and go through fingerprinting."

He learned later about a safety course he needed. He also had a 10-day waiting period. It took days before an approved trainer called back to set up an appointment. By the time he finished the process, he said, it was Feb. 26, and the $300 in fees he paid had doubled the cost of the rifle.